Ganga Shreedhar
Ganga is an Assistant Professor in Behavioural Science in LSE’s Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science and an Affiliate of the Department of Geography and Environment.
Background
Ganga is an applied behavioural and experimental economist studying how to change human behaviour in ways that simultaneously benefit people and the planet. Her research looks at how individual and contextual factors motivate environmentally relevant choices across different types of consumer and citizen domains (e.g. travel, diet and altruistic actions like giving time and money) and how they can be deployed in interventions – like behaviourally ‘smart’ informational campaigns, nudges and incentives – to ultimately create sustainable habits. She is interested in how, when and why people come together to collectively act on (or fail to) complex and ‘wicked’ global environmental social dilemmas like climate change and the sixth mass extinction.
Ganga completed a PhD in Environmental Economics and a Master’s in Public Administration at the LSE and her Masters in Development Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Prior to academia, she worked with policy-makers and researchers in India, Nepal, China and Tajikistan on agricultural development and food security policy with the International Food Policy Research Institute.
Research Interests
- Pro-social and altruistic consumer and citizen behaviours;
- environmentally relevant and health behaviours;
- Sustainability; Nature & wildlife conservation;
- Lab and field experiments.
Research
Research - 2021
Banerjee, S., Savani, M. and Shreedhar, G. (2021) ‘Public support for ‘soft’ versus ‘hard’ public policies: Review of the evidence’. Journal of Behavioral... Read more
Research - 2020
The authors of this paper examined if a ‘healthy home checklist’ would nudge households to purchase a test for radon – the leading cause of lung cancer after smoking – online, and found the strategy to increase take-up but to a low extent. Read more
This paper investigates if narratives varying the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic affects pro-wildlife conservation outcomes. In a pre-registered online... Read more
Research - 2019
With the aid of a lab experiment, we explored how imperfect monitoring and punishment networks impacted appropriation, punishment and beliefs... Read more
We explored how different types of audio-visual media content impacted charitable donations using a lab experiment. Subjects chose to donate... Read more
Research - 2018
This research investigates how different audio-visual information on conservation influences charitable donation behaviour and emotions. Read more
The unintentional effects that conservation videos requesting financial donations might have on how people act in relation to environmental causes are investigated in this study. Read more
This study simulates an environmental dilemma: a group of individuals sharing a natural resource from which they can individually gain. It shows how network structure impacts social welfare and reveals the cost of exclusively relying on perfect peer monitoring and punishment to enhance cooperation. Read more
Policy
Policy - 2016
This paper explores the potential impact of a uniform £20 per tonne carbon price on fuels and production costs across all 106 industries that comprise the UK economy. Read more
Events
News
News - 2016
Business Green, 11 January Read more
